[finished, read edit in post.]What NAS to get for running plex and is there anything I should know? - eviltoast

I want to make a plex nas so I don’t have to deal with Netflix and streaming services, here are some questions I have.

  1. What NAS should I get? I’ve heard Qnap is good, but I want to know around what nas I should get

  2. Is plex somewhat simple to setup and is there other software I should look at?

  3. Is there anything else I should know?

Edit: I ended up using an old laptop and running a file share from it then installing kodi on the other devices and using it as a storage point.

  • s38b35M5@lemmy.worldEnglish
    94·
    1 year ago

    3: You don’t need a server application to replace streaming. After years (and mixed results) of fixing corrupt Plex databases, I switched to a simple file share and access my media through Kodi now. Better features, better player, better community, no closed source, no phone home, no features added/changed/removed without recourse, no forced updates and no accounts required.

    My NAS is just a simple SMB/CIFS/NFS share and Kodi accesses it, doing all my metadata handling. If I need to migrate, backup of all watch data and other metadata is simple XML based.

    I know you asked for Plex info, but I am so pleased to be out of their clutches, I think others might prefer to be as well.

    • glimse@lemmy.worldEnglish
      12·
      1 year ago

      I’ve been running Plex for like a decade and never had the database get corrupted… What was your setup?

      • felbane@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        1 year ago

        I just had a db corruption a couple weeks ago, immediately after a server update. Easy enough to fix, but super annoying when you want things to “just work”.

        Like the OP, I’m getting tired and wary of Plex. The fact that they have a native app on most major TV brands is nice I guess, but I’m at the point where I’m seriously considering buying a handful of RPi compute modules now that they’re available again and just changing all my TVs back into “dumb display” mode and running all media via the rpi.

        I tend to get trigger anxiety on these things though, so I’d love to hear how other people are handling their self hosted media/streamcutting setups.

      • s38b35M5@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        1 year ago

        I had Plex running on a Windows server first, then locally on my Nvidia Shield, then on my FreeNAS as a jail. I used it from 2013 to 2018 or 2019. My library is only about 3k files. Plex would get slow, then start serving titles with missing metadata, then start spinning. The only fix was to purge the database and rescan the media, losing all watch data. I worked through backing up the database multiple times, but the backup was only usable for a narrow window of server versions, and was extra work Id prefer not to have to do.

        Really, the phone home and pushing for Plex Pass were more consistently annoying for me, and besides, after the switch, I realized how much more I get with the simple setup Kodi allows. My NAS is doing less work, and Kodi does so much more than Plex, minis theme music for shows,/which there is probably an add-on for, but I won’t chase it.